“Good man,” Rhodes said. He chewed slowly on a piece of doughnut. “Damned good man. Mako was lucky. We had Brannon as the Exec for two runs and then we had you for two runs. I don’t know about now, with Pete Simms riding as Number Two.”
“He might be all right,” Sirocco said slowly. “The Chaplain and the Squadron legal officer were waiting for him when we got in from the last patrol. His wife’s divorce went through while we were at sea. The legal officer had all the papers. Pete seemed kind of relieved that it was all over.”
“How about their little girl?” Barber asked.
“I don’t know,” Sirocco said. “Pete said something about being able to see her any time he was in the area as long as the war is going on. Once the war is over there’s some sort of an arrangement drawn up so he can see her at regular intervals.”
“Damned shame he’s such an asshole,” Barber said. “That is a nice little kid. His wife is a nice woman, ex-wife I mean. But he’s an asshole!”
“You can use that kind of language when you’re an enlisted man,” Sirocco said with a broad grin. “But officers don’t talk about fellow officers in quite that way. You have to say he’s a gold-plated asshole.”
Chief Torpedoman Ginch Ginty stood in the middle of the Mako’s Forward Torpedo Room, his Chief’s hat pushed back on his head, his meaty fists on his hips.
“Johnny Paul Shithead,” he rumbled. “You seen me get this room ready for a war patrol four times now and by now you should know what you gotta do! I put in for you to get bumped up to First Class and you better by-God do your damned job and do it right or I’ll bust your ass down to Second Class again! They’s some clothing adrift in that upper bunk aft, they’s a thirteen-fourteen tool layin’ on the work bench space up for’d and you’ll be lookin’ for that damned tool in the bilges once we take the first sea outside of the reef. The fuckin’ deck outboard of the port sound head is crummy. Do your fuckin’ job, sailor!” He turned and stomped out of the Torpedo Room, heading aft. Johnny Paul reached for the sound-powered telephone and dialed the After Torpedo Room.
“He’s comin’ aft and he’s breathin’ fire!” he said into the telephone. “Start heavin’ around before he gets there!”
Mako dropped her pilot with a wave from Captain Hinman and turned north, her bull nose meeting the first deep swells of the sea, splitting the green water and sending a clean drift of spray out to either side as Mako settled down to the long run to her patrol area. In the days that followed Mako moved northward through the Coral Sea and then west past Cape York on the northeastern tip of Australia and into the Arafuro Sea. Then she pushed on through the southern edge of the Banda Sea, through the Flores Sea until finally she turned northward. Pete Simms came to the bridge and looked up at the moon, half-covered with clouds, and then walked back to the cigaret deck where Captain Hinman stood.
“We’re steady on course three four zero, Captain,” Simms said. “We should be abeam of Makassar to starboard in an hour.”
“Very well,” Hinman said. “When will we be off Balikpapan?”
“Day after tomorrow, roughly,” Simms said. “We should be running by on the surface at night. I’ll set the course as soon as you tell me how close you want to go into the land.”
“The Permit cleared the area three days ago,” Hinman said. “She’s been off the port for the last two weeks. Her Captain’s report that we picked up the other night said she’d made some good contacts but couldn’t close to fire.” He shook his head. “I can’t understand that; if they’re there you go after them!”
“The Permit isn’t the Mako!” Simms said jovially. “If they’re there we’ll shake ‘em up!”
“Depends,” Captain Hinman said. “Permit might have made them gun shy. I’m not going to waste any time off the port, just go on by. If something’s there we’ll attack but I want to get on to our patrol area. It should be a honey! Luzon Strait is the crossroad for everything going and coming to the Empire. You’re going to have to be damned careful with your navigation, Pete; the twenty-first parallel of latitude is the dividing line for the Pearl and the Australia boats. We have to be sure to stay well south of the parallel.”
“Got it marked with a double red line, sir,” Simms said. “Damn it, it’s good to be back at sea! Good to get away from all those civilians and those shore sailors!”
“Everything all settled on your legal problems?” Hinman said in a low voice.
“It’s over,” Simms said. “Over and done with and I’m glad. Never marry a civilian, sir. Civilian women don’t know anything about how to keep a house shipshape or how an officer’s lady should act.”
“I’m sorry it happened, Pete. Sorry for you. Sorry for her and I feel really sorry for your little girl.”
“I’m not,” Simms said in a thick voice. “From the way her mother acted I’m not sure the kid is even mine!”
Captain Hinman turned his back on Simms and raised his binoculars to his eyes and began to search the horizon to starboard. Simms stood there for a long moment and then he shrugged his shoulders and went forward to the bridge and down below decks. After he had gone Hinman lowered his binoculars and let them hang from the leather thong around his neck. He tipped his head up and watched the SD radar element making its slow circles on top of the radio mast.
He had argued for hours in Brisbane for a new radar, the SJ type, to be installed on Mako rather than an old SD type set. The SD was strictly an aircraft warning radar, useless against surface ships. The Staff Communications officer had listened to his arguments with a straight face and then had suddenly smiled at Hinman.
“Captain, you’ve already demonstrated that you can see ships at night! You don’t need this new equipment nearly as bad as some of our Captains who can’t seem to see ships in the daylight! Those are the people who need the SJ to convince them they can get into position to attack at night or in a fog. When you come back from this patrol I give you my word I’ll have a brand new SJ radar set here for you and we’ll install it. And by the way,” he paused and began to draw a series of circles on his desk pad with a pencil, “I ordered the sonar gear moved out of the Control Room and back up into the Conning Tower where it was designed to go. I can’t understand why the Navy Yard where the ship was built ever shifted that gear down into the Control Room.”
“They did it, sir, because I asked them to do it,” Captain Hinman said. “I convinced them the Conning Tower was too crowded for the gear up there, that it could be put in the Control Room where it would be close to the Plotting Party. With all respect, sir, I wish you had notified me you were going to do this.”
“I didn’t think it was necessary to do that,” the Staff Communications officer said. “The blueprints show the sonar gear should be in the Conning Tower. I didn’t want to bother you on your R and R time for something so trivial.”
Lieut. Nathan Cohen shrugged his shoulders when Captain Hinman told him that his sonar gear and dials would be in the Conning Tower. Cohen made some measurements and then took his stool to the ship’s carpenter on the submarine tender and had the man cut several inches off each leg of the stool and fasten a battery-powered light to the stool seat so that he could see his dials if a depth charge attack shattered the lights in the Conning Tower, as had happened during the attack on the battleship at Truk.